Doodle Jump

The Story

‘What do you mean we haven’t reviewed Doodle Jump yet?’ rang the the cries round the office. ‘Surely we have? We must have!’ Alas, a third search through the Life Of Android archive proved fruitless and we needed to review this mega-selling Android arcade app sharpish. So we did…

The Experience

Assuming you’ve never played Doodle Jump, here’s the lowdown. You play a weird green creature with a long nose and four legs who excels in jumping between platforms. The higher up you bounce the less platforms there are and the more obstacles that are placed in your way. There is no end to the game, you just keep jumping until you can bounce no more and, hopefully, beat your high score.

It is simultaneously extremely easy and puzzlingly difficult to understand why Doodle Jump has become such a phenomenon. One the one hand, the app is designed for quick pick up and play fun, you can start gaming in seconds and get knocked out in just as short amount of time. On the other hand, there’s very little variety to this app. Bar some Christmas, Halloween and space-themed skins there’s little else to make Doodle Jump click if you don’t feel love at first sight.

Still, all the ingredients for instantaneous addiction are here, plus the addition of a pass and play challenge mode means you can take on friends, relations and strangers who reckon they’ve got some better bouncing skills than you. Having lived with Doodle Jump for such a long time now, our initial compulsion to pay the app has passed but that’s been replaced by occassional stints every week or so. For an app to have that sort of longevity, its developers must have done something special.

8.1

The Bottom Line

This simple and addictive app lacks variety but still holds longevity.